Monthly Archives: February 2008

So my computer’s sound recording facilities had been playing up, right. Had been for a while. It was no good. I wanted to make an album.

Thus on the morning of January 15th, I called a taxi and took the old gel into town to be serviced. They told me it would take four days. It wound up taking three weeks. But they did it.

In the meantime, I got totally hacked. First teigan@gmail.com, then [mylegalname]@gmail.com, my blog and my Facebook accounts all stopped accepting their passwords across the final week of January.

On Friday the 8th of February, I got my computer back. On Saturday, I threw a party. This is where we came in.

Upon getting reputered, I created some special email accounts and conducted a few experiments. Via these I established to a high degree of likelihood that my hacker was good old Henley. Somewhat predictably, I lost my shit at him.

On Tuesday 12th, I attempted to boot my newly restored digital handmaiden only to discover that – four days after returning home to me – she had totally, totally died.

I was ‘puterless once more.

Then the following night – Valentine’s Eve, no less – none other than Henley’s girlfriend, a former close associate of mine, claimed responsibility for the hacking via SMS.

Leave the poor petal alone, she said. He’s innocent.

I was skeptical at first, but when she told me that teigan@gmail was wide open for resetting (Quick! Jump up and find an open internet cafe at 2am etc), I realised she was probably telling at least some weird Lady-J-since-she-turned-feral version of the truth.

Why had the former love of my life done this to me? She’d written to me at another account, she said – one of the ones she hadn’t violated and locked me out of – explaining everything.

Only problem was, I had (of course) been changing all my passwords like a demon – without having gotten around to making a backup or a hard copy of any of them. From my computer. Which had since – you will recall – dropped totally, totally dead.

In other words I was now not only ‘puterless and locked out of my hacked accounts, but ‘puterless and locked out of all my internet accounts.

Then in the early hours of Sunday 17th, Wouters dropped my last remaining link to civilisation phone in a full glass of bourbon & coke.

Oy.

Various people have eased my journey through this Durdenesque ordeal, and thanks are due.

Mishuki of Hagakure 419 fame was good enough to let me use hir Facebook profile. My colleague in social research, fellow FB tragic and soon-to-be-housemate Celestine has been extremely generous with her 3G handset, enabling me to update my status in something akin to the style to which I’ve become compulsively accustomed. Thad gave me a safe-haven email account on his server. And last Tuesday, having learned that my dead six-year-old eMac would cost $700 to reanimate, my long-suffering parents offered to buy me a MacBook. Which was very nice of them.

I picked it up this morning. I’m using it now. It’s lovely.

(I’d take a picture but since the destruction of my phone I’ve got no working digital camera, except the one inside said MacBook. And its eye is not prehensile. But here’s a picture of the box:

)

And now I have my accounts back.

Things are gradually returning to some semblance of what passes for ‘normal’ on Planet Teigan.

*flops exhaustedly*

Apart from all of that, I have mostly been going out a lot – having, y’know, not a whole lot else to do – and taking quite a lot of acid.

It’s been.. awesome, actually. Can’t complain.

Oh, and I got engaged on Saturday night. I think. But that’s a whole other story.

I’ve managed to resecure the blog account, at least, thanks to a friendly cookie which recognised my machine. Bless that cookie. No damage appears to have been inflicted. The only evidence of intrusion is that the answer to my secret security question (“What is your mother’s maiden name?”) has changed from “Symington” to “whore”.

Charmed, I’m sure.

Cunts.

Here – nested all meta-style – is an earlier entry I scrawled freehand on Tuesday, and was planning to post at the ‘ternet caff that evening but couldn’t, because I’d been hacked:

Munted.

Is the word of the week. As in “Man, I got munted on Saturday night.” And I did. I really did.

At 10pm I was summoned by Wouters to a party in the Brunswick area. I was only going to stay out for two hours or so on account of: (a) I was supposed to be working the following day –

(In other news: I started working at the doodle palace again last week; it’s been almost as much of a shock to my system as Rainbow. But in a significantly less good way.)

– and (b) I didn’t actually know the person who’s party it was or anyone else who was going to be there. Or so I thought..

As it turned out.. ah, it’s quite a funny story, but it’s also a bit complex and at least four of my five remaining readers basically know it already.

Suffice to say a munting good time was had, this being only improved – and further enmunted – by the semi-random appearance of none other than the mysterious and extraordinary Thad at an advanced stage of the evening. (Update 8 Feb: I’ve encountered him twice more since then. I think he’s stalking me. Or someone I know. But I don’t mind at all.)

I didn’t make it to work. I’m not sure how I made it home. I’m really not.

In other muntedness news, I’m having a party tomorrow night. It’s going to be pretty good. If you are reading this and you know my street address, you can come.